The present disclosure relates generally to additive manufacturing, and more particularly to additive manufacturing of heat exchangers.
Additive manufacturing is an established but growing technology that includes layer-wise construction of articles from thin layers of feed material. Additive manufacturing can involve applying liquid, solid, or particulate material to a workstage, then curing, melting, and/or sintering, etc. to create a layer. The process is repeated up to several thousand times or more to construct the desired finished component or article.
The use of additive manufacturing to produce heat exchangers, powder bed fusion additive manufacturing process in particular using including but not limited to laser or electron beam as energy source, can create fin and other part feature wall thicknesses that are larger than desired for required spatial and thermodynamic characteristics of the heat exchanger for a given application. The resulting walls can have inconsistent thicknesses, brittle or weak structures, and inefficient thermo-dynamic characteristics. Extensive experimental trial and error can be required to identify optimum process parameters in order to produce a heat exchanger wall with a desired thickness.